When I became executive director of the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA), we were running a webinar program that only attracted six to 10 participants per session. These quarterly offerings weren't well received because they required members to pay a small fee to attend. Due to the low enrollment, the program was only generating about a couple hundred dollars in revenue after all the effort of coordinating speakers and creating content.

Today, those same webinars routinely draw 75 to 275 registrants. We run them twice monthly instead of quarterly, they’re free for all members, and they’ve become a powerful sponsorship opportunity for our partners, often selling out months in advance. We’ve gone from a program that was essentially a burden to one that’s a significant revenue generator, while serving hundreds of members with continuing education credits.

The methodology didn’t change. The mindset did.

I use this example to show that when talking about innovation within your association, you don’t have to launch a new program or event. You don’t have to turn everything upside down or start from scratch. The simplest approach to practical innovation can come from looking at what you’re doing now and asking: What can we do to grow interest in this, to grow revenue through this, to make this a better product for our members?

Building a Foundation for Innovation

Innovation has to be a mechanism for meeting the needs of your members or your mission. Gone are the days when an association could define what it is once and use that fixed identity as the ongoing, permanent measure of success. We must constantly be evolving, constantly looking at our membership and mission, and digging deep into what is needed to better serve those we represent.

For me, staying engaged comes naturally because I work in health care — an industry that’s always in the news and always changing. But beyond industry knowledge, there’s something more fundamental: critically thinking about what our members need and how what we’re creating and distributing daily impacts their work. Am I touching every need? Are we providing our members the things that will help them be better at their job? That ongoing curiosity and desire to improve isn’t always inherent, but it is something that can be cultivated.

Curiosity doesn’t thrive on empty; it needs space, energy and stimulation to take shape. My team works incredibly hard, but I do my best to make sure they’re not just grinding away at their desks. I encourage flexibility: working from different locations, taking breaks when the weather’s beautiful, stepping away to recharge. That flexibility gives them energy when they come back to work, and that energy ultimately makes them more interested in the work they do and more creative. Just having a different backdrop can make you see something about a problem and solve it in a way that you wouldn’t have in the same chair, in the same place.

Practical Tips for Building an Innovation Culture

Based on what’s worked at ASHHRA, here are my recommendations for association leaders ready to make innovation a habit.

Start with strategic alignment. If you’ve got a strategic plan that says you want to grow membership or grow revenue, then finding innovations that meet those goals becomes an easier sell to boards and stakeholders. When creative ideas connect directly to organizational priorities, they face less resistance. It wouldn’t be part of your strategic plan to simply do what you’ve always done. That wouldn’t be moving you forward.

Begin with small wins. You don’t have to start with your most ambitious project, the biggest risk, the most significant innovation. Start small, find successes and leverage those successes to move on to bigger changes. It’s going to be easier to launch a small programmatic change that’s innovative or leads to impactful results than to start an entirely new program. Once you’ve found success, challenge yourself and your organization to take on those bigger challenges.

Find partners who’ve already solved the problem. When we first considered launching The ASHHRA Podcast, I was initially skeptical that our efforts would be worthwhile. I didn’t want to start something that would only get a few listeners a month. Those reservations were lifted when I met two podcast partners who had already navigated listenership challenges and found success, resulting in thousands of monthly downloads.

Partnering with them and leveraging their experience meant we already had a blueprint for success because they’d worked through the trials. In a little over two years, we’ve had over 2 million downloads, and our listenership continues to grow. Even better yet, several organizations discovered us through the podcast partners and became conference, podcast, and educational sponsors, generating substantial revenue through relationships the podcast created.

Embrace failure as learning. Oftentimes, when we create something new, if the first try doesn’t succeed, we give up. For instance, when we launched our “office hours” series—monthly member conversations (via conference call) on key industry topics—initial attempts fell flat. Despite my efforts to facilitate discussion, participants remained passive observers. After three attempts with adjustments, we paused the program.

Over the past few months, our education committee relaunched the program but with a crucial difference: peer members, not me as executive director, facilitating the conversations. The change created space for genuine dialogue among equals and engagement soared. Sometimes you’re going to fall on your face, but you’re going to learn from it and make the next time successful.

Recognize that timing matters. That office hours program also taught me about market timing. We launched it pre-COVID when everyone worked in offices surrounded by colleagues. Did we need that virtual community? Not as much. Today’s remote workforce craves those connections in ways they didn’t need five years ago. Time marches on and creates opportunities.

Look for partnership opportunities everywhere. I pick up business cards from conferences and look for groups that aren’t necessarily human resources organizations, but health care societies with vested interest in workforce issues. My intention is to reach out to everyone and say, “Rather than creating workforce content yourself, we can provide it.” This grows our recognition, and you meet your members’ needs. Growing together is better for both organizations.

The Courage to Move Forward

Innovation ultimately requires managerial courage, which is the willingness to move forward despite uncertainty. If you’re afraid to stub your toe at work, then don’t change anything. But work is going to be boring. You’re not going to get better. You’re probably going to lose market share.

Don’t be afraid to go a little beyond your comfort zone; that’s what’s likely to move you forward. At minimum, it’ll keep you from moving backward. Every industry moves on, laws change, there’s innovation everywhere. If you’re not staying current with that, you’re falling behind.

For association executives ready to make innovation a leadership habit, the path forward is clear: Start with what you already do, create space for new thinking, embrace learning from failure, and cultivate the courage to keep moving forward.